Do DCs have consciousness? A scientific approach..

Mystic do you have a link to the Tholey source for this article?

Heh interesting discussion :smile:

No I don’t have a link to this article. In fact, I don’t think you can find this paper somewhere on the net… On PubMed there’s only a short abstract of it. I’ve found it in the big article collection of the psychology library here at school. Perhaps they too have access to past copies of the “Perceptual and Motor Skills” magazine?

On the Paul Tholey memorial :
there is a french translation of this article, but no english translation. You can find other articles in English and German.

Wow thanks for that link! I see there’s a link to a related article about DC consciousness Tholey once wrote:
It’s in German though :neutral:

Wow, I find that very interesting, especially since I am always curious on an outward perspective on me. I do believe I may give it a try when I start LD’ing.

Very interesting,I can see how DCs could have memorys from past dreams.
I would like to study this more myself,If anyone has any links or anymore info on this I would be in debt to you.

This is the most interesting thing I’ve read since I first learned about lucid dreaming about 7 months ago. Very nice, there should be more studies on this. My LDing has been a little off lately, I think this has just given me new inspiration.

I believe in multdimensional theory. We are all one huge consciousness separated/encarnated in many objects and characters, living at the same time, in different reallitys or vectors of time but all happening just right now. DC are not only in my mind, but I,m also in theirs. We humans are DC´s. I had a LD and I asked a man “How do you feel of being a part of my mind?” He said then “Exactly the way you feel being part of mine. We are both dreaming each other”.

Every ego on this earth, awake or asleep, every object, all diversity of things, they are only different versions of the same Self. Expresions of their content. Time isnt lineal but vertical, like a tree, the tree of life. Our huge mistake, I believe, is to take brain as the basis of dream, wich is our materialistic philosphical point of view. But maybe we are wrong, maybe dream is the basis of brain. ¿What if matter is only a peculiar vibration of consciousness? What if dreams dont occur in our brains, but our brain in our dream? ¿What if consciuosness is not inside our body but our body inside consciousness? The problem is thinking ourselfes as separated entitys, as separated souls. ¿What if the universe is more as a great mind, rather than a great mechanic-machine?

Well you may say I have to proof it, but our methods of proving things are limitated by the same paradigm from were they come from… I see with my heart, and thas my experimental proof.

Consciousness is not a subproduct of matter. Like fruits contain seeds and seeds fruits, the universe in the begining contained conciousness like a seed. Everything what comes in the future, its already here, but its only waiting to manifest. Evolution is not a progress from things wich convert in other things, there is no change, universe is only a huge brain/mind remembering what “it” already fullfiled. What we see is the past. Just like during dreams we create from our memorys a whole scenario, such is the universe nature, a mental function, very similar to dreaming.

The problem again is taking ourselfs as the basis of experience, we are not the experimentors, we are the experience of the universe. We are not experimenting with things, things are being experimented true us. We are not dreamers but dreamed by something elese. We do not think, we are the toughts.

We are the toughts, and maybe the thinker at the same time but in an other order of reallity. There we are the Source of ourselfs/ego. ¡What a paradox! :tongue:

I don’t think the experiment was desinged to suggest that dream characters have a seperate or independent consciousness… but I think it suggests that dream characters can operate independently as if they were individuals in their own right.

The following would suggest that the researches were looking at this from the point of view that DC are still generated from within our own subconscious

I don’t think it is weird that we don’t remember some aspects of our dreams… how do we know that we are remebering 100% of any given dream anyway?

Also… have you never dreamt that you were somebody or something else?

Sorry… I was looking at the memory part a little later on… you will need to re read my post.

This study is not promoting that they do act out in on their own… imagine the consequences… as soon as you stop dreaming does that mean the dream continues somewhere else without you?.. People who believe in other realities would probably say “yes”. But this experiment wasn’t desigined to test that.

Yes, independency could be only a reflection of the suconscious, but not only for DC, but for ourselfs. ¿Can we really operate with independence of our own inner psyquic proceess? ¿Are there really a difference between us and DC´s?

Free will, every decison we aparently make on our own, they are pretty conditioned by our past experiences. Subconscious play a big role in our actions. We are reflecting its content every second, just as DC`s do. We are puppets, walking and talking to each other with virtual independence, but innerly we are the same one pupeteer/universe, talking only with himself. Our identity is only a mask the whole universe uses to experience itself separate form itself, isolated/ego.

There is no escape, ever action we take, is an expression of some latent content in the universe. We give life to its ideas.

Does dream characters still exist living their lifes while we are awake? Yes, just as our bodys are still on bed while we are flying in the dream world, no matter we are consciouss of it or not; just like this they have their own life no matter if we are not aware of it. For us they disapear but not for themselfs.

By the way, and I,m going to contradict myself now. ¿Is there a way to proof that our body is really still on bed while we are seleping an not aware of it. You can say, ¡sure, thats a silly question, put a camara or an observer to watch you while seelping! But, lets say there is no witness, artificial, animal, or human to observe or sense the body, how can we be sure its still right there? ¿Does things stop their continum of existence when “we” or “something” break atention to it?. ¿Does objetcs in sapce have dependency to a subject?

There are to ways then of thinking it. Or we become aware of different reallitys and characters wich are there all the time, or these reallitys exist only while we are aware of them. ¡Maybe both! They exist all the time in a latent, dormant form, and awareness give life to them. ¡Yes!, Its like a play, all actors are setlle in their positions, with their scripts well memorized, but they dont move or start manifesting the idea of the paly untill the public/witness is there.

¿So how does thesee fit to our dormant preexistent body? Its not there in a manifest way of existence, its not visible for there is nobody to watch. When we sleep our body became energy with no mass or form, its absorves itself in a sort of energy configuration or code until we, someone or something becomes aware of the body.

Matter is a cuality of consciousness, and quantum mechanics and new phisics are discoverying the play of cosnciousness in the results of their experiments. ¡This is a paradigm revolution!

Except that when we are lucid dream… we ARE aware of our body in bed. Also, if DCs exist while we are awake as well as when we are asleep, why does their consciousness change when we become lucid? Why should they change if they are entirely separate? The article is about characters in lucid dreams, not normal ones. Characters in NLDs are often boring and flat, and I doubt they are there when we awake.

Tommers, about the memory thing and some of the other stuff you said…

What if the brain HAS recreated a consciousness for another dream character and not much else? By consciousness I mean free will and awareness of itself, but then it could simply feed off of your thoughts and memories?

So you wouldn’t wake up remembering what THEIR perspective was because once it happens they have no recollection of it except from YOUR perspective and your memories, but they are still separate with their own perspective.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Sometimes in a dream you switch between yourself and someone else in a dream. Perhaps you are remembering part of your DC’s dream.

When we are asleep we are more recpetive of things on a sunbconscious level. DCs could be a representation of ourselves. Some DCs I have spoken to seem to either consider themselves part of my collective subconcious or some other enity in a weird mixture. The real question is can you believe them? Or really should I be asking if I can believe myself?

If you were aware of it you would wake up. I guess what you are saying are the experiments in eye movement while LD. Yes, you can move your phisical eyes while LD. But you do the task (move eyes) with your dream body. While lucid dreaming you are aware of your dreaming body.

Or maybe you are right, we are aware of both at the same time, and thats the reason for the body in bed for not to disapear. But, what I,m saying is that awareness is requiere for the body pressence, no matter if that awarness is our own or others.

Id love to think that the DCs are there own people, but i think the more obvious solution is that they are just what we expect them to be. In ND they are flat and boring but then again so are we. In ND we dont expect much from them because we arent at our full potential.
Once we become lucid we expect more of a response from the DCs and so they become more realisitc and 3d. I love the idea that they are what we expect them to be.

Well after thinking about this for a few days I came up with a thought on it.
Schizophrenic’s are known to have multiple consciousness,So what if the DCs are just one of our personaltys?
It feels,thinks,and remeber,But it is surpressed by our own consciousness?
This is just a thought that popped in my head.

If you are hardcore into dream analysis i geuss you could take that approach and think to yourslef ‘what does this person mean to me’ to try and find what part of you they symbolise. If the DCs are multiple personalities what does that make the objects and environment that is in the dreams?